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China Joins Inquiry Into Steroid Ring

SHANGHAI, Oct. 1 — The Chinese government is investigating whether companies in China are shipping the raw materials for illegal steroids to factories in the United States.

The government said it was cooperating with the American authorities, who are conducting a crackdown on steroid manufacturers in the United States and other parts of the world.

The Drug Enforcement Administration and other American authorities announced the arrests of more than 120 people last week and said they had closed dozens of small laboratories and seized cash, drugs and other assets.

The authorities, who called the case Operation Raw Deal, did not disclose who used the steroids but said they had a large database of names and thought that many of the users were athletes and bodybuilders.

American officials said that 37 Chinese companies were involved in the illegal trade and that they had turned over the names of most of the companies to the Chinese authorities. Investigators identified only one Chinese company, GeneScience Pharmaceutical, which is China’s largest producer of human growth hormone.

In mid-September, a Rhode Island grand jury indicted GeneScience and its American-educated founder and chief executive, Jin Lei, on charges of supplying human growth hormone to distributors in the United States, where it is not licensed to be sold.

GeneScience officials did not return phone calls seeking comment last week. A spokesman for the parent company of GeneScience, which is based in the north China city of Changchun, said the Chinese government had not yet contacted the pharmaceutical company. Zhou Weiqun, board secretary of the Changchun High Tech Group, said the company had learned about the indictment from investors who had read news reports.

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China’s state-controlled news media did not carry many reports of the steroids raid in the United States, but foreign media reports circulate inside the country and over the Internet.

The Chinese government’s first response came over the weekend, when a spokesman for the State Food and Drug Administration told the state-run Xinhua News Agency that the authorities were cooperating with United States officials and that regulators would take action against any illegal activities.

“We will find out the truth as soon as possible, and if there are illegal activities, we will handle them at once, according to the law,” said Yan Jiangying, an agency spokeswoman.

The Chinese regulator said that the government had strict controls over the use of steroids and that no individual or organization was allowed to produce or sell steroids without a license.

There was no mention of human growth hormone or other illicit drugs named by American investigators.

People close to the investigation in the United States said one Chinese company involved in the illicit trade was the Tianjin Xinmei Technology Company. But a spokesman for the company, who refused to give a name, said by telephone last week, “We just posted our ads on the Internet, but nobody contacted us to buy human growth hormone.”

Last week, officials at the World Anti-Doping Agency, which is based in Montreal, said they were encouraged by China’s cooperation with international investigators and the steps the government has taken in the last year to crack down on illegal drugs.